Sarah Louise and the city...

Well, we've already established that I only get 4 channels. (Well, sometimes five...) So I never caught Sex and the City when it was on HBO. I've only had my DVD player since March, so I hadn't checked out the DVDs. No, my introduction was a few episodes when it aired on TBS while staying at my parents. My Monday through Friday routine is: if I'm home at six and/or seven, I watch Friends. Saturdays at six, FOX showed two episodes of that show with David Spade...Just Shoot Me! which at first I hated but it grew on me. At seven, I would watch Friends. One week, I came home, turned on the TV, and David Spade was gone, and in his place was Sarah Jessica Parker and ensemble. So I became more entrenched in the lives of Carrie Bradshaw, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha. They show two episodes, from the same season, back to back, so you get a continuity of story. So now I really want to watch Season Six to see how it all works out.

So yesterday, feeling sorry for myself that I wouldn't be attending the Memorial Day picnic at the Creasy's new digs, I went to Giant Eagle and straight to Iggle Video, their video store inside the grocery store. I rented Sex and the City Season One, Season Two, Down with Love, and Mean Girls. So far, I've watched Season One, Disc One.

I like Carrie Bradshaw. She's a writer, and while she has an alarming addiction to expensive footwear, she seems like someone I wouldn't mind meeting for coffee.

When I was in high school, I had my first boyfriend the second semester of my senior year. This is my prom date!, I thought. No, I was his secret fling. He had at least four other secret flings that semester, all at the same time. So you can imagine that a girl might go to Cosmo for advice, if she couldn't talk to her mother. And I was scared. That I'd meet someone, and we'd have all those icky conversations about "Your place or mine," and I'd have to worry about diseases and pregnancy and...I was very relieved second semester of my freshman year of college when I became a Christian. Now I don't have to worry about all that! I just have to save myself...

Famous last words. I didn't date through college. My first boyfriend in Pittsburgh, a year after I'd graduated with my bachelor's degree in English, was bisexual. As in, not really interested in me. That was fine with me--I just wanted companionship. Which worked until he fell in love with me. It was a disaster. I had a few more disastrous relationships, until about eight years ago, when I had *the* disaster. I as good as had a ring on my finger when it became apparent that we wanted very different things out of life. I thought he enjoyed attending church with me. He was doing it merely to rack up points, which he would then later redeem. He required less sleep than I did, so he wanted to go out every night, or stay in. I unraveled. At first, slowly and then with more and more speed, until I was doing what is called in the mental health field as "rapid cycling." I was staying up all night and going to work the next day ENERGIZED. I was talking fast and then I was down in the dumps. After months of my saying "I think we want different things, I don't think this is going to work," he dumped me, when I was already in a trough. Luckily, my mother was already on her way to visit me from Virginia when I hung up the phone with Mr. X. I never got dressed, and answered the door wearing my nightgown. She had never seen me this way. I had never seen me this way. It was the beginning of my long road to an eventual diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder.

My mother and I went out for dinner. We went to see "Good Will Hunting." As we waited for the movie to start, my mom told me about how offended she was when my dad took her to see "Raging Bull," because the language was so foul. Um, we laughed about that later. But the profanity in "Good Will Hunting" wasn't gratuitous, it was just the way those guys talked.

I haven't been in a relationship of that ilk for eight years. When I mentioned that on the phone the other day to Sally, she couldn't believe it. "And how many years since you graduated from Library School?" Four. She's the one with a five year old, which makes the counting easy for me...

As I watch Carrie, and Charlotte, and Miranda, and Samantha, shoe shopping, drinking their Cosmos (which aren't very established in the first six episodes), and dishing about men, I remember who I was when I dated those men. I didn't like what I became when I was with them: I didn't have a life, I had a boyfriend. I became consumed. It wasn't love, it was addiction. I am afraid of that happening again. I have a nice life. I have a garret that I adore, albeit dusty and cluttered. I have a job I like most of the time, albeit not at the top of the salary ladder. I have friends that I enjoy meeting for coffee, or for a morning of baking. Where would a man fit into this lifestyle? The old Sarah Louise would have dropped it all for that knight in shining armor. But the new me, the wiser me? I'm not so sure.

Where am I going with this? I don't know. But all this time in my apartment, drinking liquids, taking sauna showers, taking naps, has made me more contemplative. My English teachers were forever saying I was weak on conclusion paragraphs. So sue me, I still am.